The difference between good analysis and bad analysis is whether you dig into the root causes or just skim the surface. A columnist isn’t always expected to get to the root, yet they often try. A politician, however, is expected to tackle the core of issues but usually sticks to superficial answers because they’re easier to sell to the public. 

Many of history’s most disastrous political mistakes stem from politicians’ reluctance to understand the heart of problems. They claim there’s no time, that decisions must be made quickly. But making decisions without grasping the issue is precisely what bad governance looks like.

With the endless stream of sexual assaults in Europe this summer at pools and beaches, committed by immigrants against young European women and girls, you’d think the urgent response would be to halt illegal immigration, stop funding hundreds of centers for unaccompanied African minors in major European cities, and toughen penalties, starting with the immediate deportation of offenders. European social democrats and Christian democrats — two sides of the same coin — don’t see it that way.

Germany, one of the countries hit hardest by rapes and sexual assaults by illegal immigrants and so-called war refugees, has analyzed the problem and come up with a grand solution: female condoms with spikes to pinch attackers’ penises. This is not a joke. German researchers are promoting the possible use of a vaginal device with internal spikes designed to injure assailants during a sexual attack, similar to the the Rape-aXe device that was created in South Africa. It could be absurdly hilarious if it weren’t real, if it weren’t so unbelievable.

In Spain, after three rapes by Moroccans in just a few weeks, residents of several affected towns — some with up to 30 percent immigrant populations — took to the streets to hunt down the attackers and lynch the Moroccans involved. The government responded by cracking down with full force… on the citizens. They even expelled journalists covering the story, claiming they were stirring up trouble by encouraging the far right.

Now that the initial wave of outrage has died down, the vigilante hunts have stopped, and things are back to normal — until the next rape. The Left, which organizes protests and mobs every time there’s a sexual assault or crime against a woman, is dead silent because the perpetrators are foreigners. Their stance has little to do with getting to the root of the problem and everything to do with the moral rot spread by postmodern leftism.

In truth, left-wing politicians are the real experts at avoiding the core of issues, though they’re not alone in this. They’ve hijacked the idea of progress in the most absurd way, treating it like a god and sacrificing common sense, reality, and the possibility that they might be wrong. Maybe that’s why Christopher Dawson wrote years ago, “The events of the last forty years have dealt a severe blow to the self-confidence of Western civilization and to the belief in progress, so deeply rooted in the 19th century, that men tend to swing too far in the opposite direction.”

I don’t know if I’m just getting older and no longer grasp the dynamics of humanity’s stages, but I’m convinced that a civilization that needs to protect its women by installing rapist-trapping devices in their vaginas is a civilization that’s done for — morally and socially dead. I don’t think there’s anything left after that. It’s the end of the West, or at least the end of Europe, or at the very least, the end of Germany. Instead of demanding Europe rearm to face external threats, Trump should demand they rearm to finally confront the internal ones.